A surgical coupling system and a surgical drive system of the type described hereinabove are known from DE 102 25 857 A1 for example. Surgical hand pieces incorporating an integrated drive in the form of an electric motor, also referred to hereinafter as surgical motorised hand pieces, are electrically coupled to the known drive system by means of a plug-type connection to a supply line which may also be referred to as a terminal cable. This plug connection process is effected in a sterile region in order to enable the hand pieces to be changed intra-operatively. This means however that the plug connection must be treated i.e. cleaned and sterilized after each usage. In particular thereby, the plug connections go through a superheated steam sterilization process.
For the purposes of activating the hand pieces, it is known to provide actuating elements such as hand switches for example on one of the two coupling devices of the coupling system, for example, on the coupling device provided on the terminal cable, or foot switches. If, in addition, there is a requirement for the type of hand-piece to be interrogated automatically by a control and/or regulating device of the drive system, also referred to simply as a motor control system hereinafter, then it is practically impossible to provide the terminal cable with only as many lines as the electric motor has windings, i.e. in the case of an electric motor comprising three motor windings, a terminal cable comprising just three lines. However, the provision of additional control or interrogating lines also means that the coupling system must have correspondingly more electrical terminal contacts. Since the hand pieces have to be treated again after each usage, this results in an undesirably high failure rate due to electrical contact problems in the case of present systems. And not just for the latter reason, but also because the switching elements presently being utilised for the activation of a motor current circuit are also susceptible to corrosion.